Rex Stout
Omit Flowers
I
In my opinion it was one of Nero Wolfe’s neatest jobs, and he never got a nickel for it.
He might or might not have taken it on merely as a favor to his old friend Marko Vukcic, who was one of the only three people who called him by his first name, but there were other factors. Rusterman’s Restaurant was the one place besides home where Wolfe really enjoyed eating, and Marko owned it and ran it, and he put the bee on Wolfe in one of the small private rooms at Rusterman’s as the cheese cart was being wheeled in to us at the end of a specially designed dinner. Furthermore, the man in trouble had at one time been a cook.
“I admit,” Marko said, reaching to give me another hunk of Cremona Gorgonzola, “that he forfeited all claim to professional respect many years ago. But in my youth I worked under him at Mondor’s in Paris, and at the age of thirty he was the best sauce man in France. He had genius, and he had a generous heart. I owe him much. I would choke on this cheese if I sat on my hands while he gets convicted of a murder he did not commit.” Marko gestured with the long thin knife. “But who am I? A Boniface. Whereas you are a great detective, and my friend. I appeal to you to save him.” Marko pointed the knife at me. “And, naturally, to Archie — also, I hope, my friend.”
I nodded with much feeling, having his food and wine all through me. “Absolutely,” I agreed, “but don’t waste any butter on me. All I do is carry things.”
“Ha,” Marko said skeptically. “I know how deep you go, my friend. As for the money that will be required, I shall of course furnish it.”
Wolfe grunted, drawing our eyes to him. His big face, which never looked big on account of the great expanse of the rest of him, was cheerful and a little flushed, as always after a good meal, but the annoyance that had brought forth the grunt showed in his eyes. They were on our host.
“Pfui.” He grunted again. “Is this right, Marko? No. If you want to hire me and pay me, I do business in my office, not at your table. If you want to draw on friendship, why mention money? Do you owe this man — what’s his name?”
“Pompa. Virgil Pompa.”
“Do you owe him enough to warrant a draft on my affection?”
“Yes.” Marko was slightly annoyed too. “Damn it, didn’t I say so?”
“Then I have no choice. Come to my office tomorrow at eleven and tell me about it.”
“That won’t do,” Marko declared. “He’s in jail, charged with murder. I had a devil of a time getting to him this afternoon, with a lawyer. Danger is breathing down his neck and he’s nearly dead of fear. He is sixty-eight years old.”
“Good heavens.” Wolfe sighed. “Confound it, there were things I wanted to talk about. And what if he killed that man? From the newspaper accounts it seems credible. Why are you so sure he didn’t?”
“Because I saw him and heard him this afternoon. Virgil Pompa could conceivably kill a man, of course. And having killed, he certainly would have sense enough to lie to policemen and lawyers. But he could not look me in the eye and say what he said the way he said it. I know him well.” Marko crossed his chest with the knife as if it had been a sword. “I swear to you, Nero, he did not kill. Is that enough?”
“Yes.” Wolfe pushed his plate. “Give me some more cheese and tell me about it.”
“Le Bondon?”
“All five, please. I haven’t decided yet which to favor.”
II
At half-past eight the following morning, Wednesday, Wolfe was so furious he got some coffee in his windpipe. This was up in his bedroom, where he always eats breakfast on a tray brought by Fritz. Who got him sore was a butler — at least, the male voice on the phone was a butler’s if I ever heard one. First the voice asked him to spell his name, and then, after keeping him waiting too long, told him that Mrs. Whitten did not care to speak with any newspapermen. After that double insult I was surprised he even remembered there was coffee left in his cup, and it was only natural he should swallow the wrong way.
Also we were up a stump, since if we were going to make a start at honoring Marko’s draft on Wolfe’s affection we certainly would have to get in touch with Mrs. Whitten or some member of the family.
It was strictly a family affair, as we had got it from the newspapers and from Marko’s account of what Virgil Pompa had told him. Six months ago Mrs. Floyd Whitten had been not Mrs. Whitten but Mrs. H. R. Landy, a widow, and sole owner of AMBROSIA. You have certainly seen an AMBROSIA unless you’re a hermit, and have probably eaten in one or more. The only ones I have ever patronized are AMBROSIA 19, on Grand Central Parkway near Forest Hills, Long Island; AMBROSIA 26, on Route 7 south of Danbury; and AMBROSIA 47, on Route 202 at Flemington, New Jersey. Altogether, in twelve states, either ninety-four thousand people or ninety-four million, I forget which, eat at an AMBROSIA every day.
H. R. Landy created it and built it up to AMBROSIA 109, died of overwork, and left everything to his wife. He also left her two sons and two daughters. Jerome, thirty-three, was a partner in a New York real estate firm. Mortimer, thirty-one, sort of fiddled around with radio packages and show business. And only the Internal Revenue Bureau, if anyone, knew how he was making out. Eve, twenty-seven, was Mrs. Daniel Bahr, having married the newspaper columnist whose output appeared in three times as many states as AMBROSIA had got to. Phoebe, twenty-four, had graduated from Vassar and then pitched in to help mama run AMBROSIA.
But most of the running of AMBROSIA had been up to Virgil Pompa, after Landes death. Years ago Landy had coaxed him away from high cuisine by talking money, thereby causing him, as Marko had put it, to forfeit all claim to professional respect. But he had gained other kinds of respect and had got to be Landy’s trusted field captain and second in command. When Landy died Pompa had almost automatically taken over, but it had soon begun to get a little difficult. The widow had started to get ideas, one especially, that son Mortimer should take the wheel. However, that experiment had lasted only two months, coming to an abrupt end when Mortimer had bought eight carloads of black-market lamb which proved to have worms or something. Then for a while the widow had merely been irritating, and Pompa had decided to carry on until his seventieth birthday. It became even easier for him when Mrs. Landy married a man named Floyd Whitten, for she took her new husband on a three months’ trip in South America, and when they returned to New York she was so interested in him that she went to the AMBROSIA headquarters in the Empire State Building only one or two mornings a week. Phoebe, the youngest daughter, had been on the job, but had been inclined to listen to reason — that is, to Pompa.
Suddenly, a month ago, Mrs. Whitten had told Pompa that he was old enough to retire, and that they would start immediately to train her husband to take over the direction of the business.
This dope on Floyd Whitten is partly from the papers, but mostly from Pompa via Marko. For a year before Landy’s death Whitten had been in charge of public relations for AMBROSIA, and had kept on after Landy died, but when he married the boss, and came back from the long trip with his bride, he didn’t resume at the office. Either he wanted to spend his time with her, or she wanted to spend hers with him, or both. Whitten (this from Pompa) was a smoothie who knew how to work his tongue. He was too selfish and conceited to get married, though he had long enjoyed intimate relations with a Miss Julie Alving, a woman about his age who earned her living by buying toys for Meadow’s department store. It appeared that the facts about Whitten which had outraged Pompa most were, first, he had married a woman a dozen years his senior, second, he had coolly and completely discarded Julie Alving when he married his boss, and third, he had kept extra shirts in his office at AMBROSIA so he could change every day after lunch. It was acknowledged and established that any draft by Whitten on Pompa’s affection would have been returned with the notation Insufficient Funds.